The Greatest

I flee yellow handed
leaving sun drenched footprints
in the riverbed built by you
for me
with great apathy in mind.

I conquer love like sorrow,
with Italian peppers and
one too many Tom Collins'.
Feet sure between envelopes
of surrender and parchments
of war, I have
stripped naked and wearing
nothing but the white flag
I run
through pools of
purple left by bodies
and
around the outside
of sinking sandpits
filled to the brim with prrudish protestations.
Spy briefly in the House of Love
on Ladies pulled rigid and painted quiet,
spy softly on men,
as they hold their heads and think
of what to say next.

Dirt-faced and river worn,
I seek solace form this and these
and I love once more
running over pumpkin patches
and brush away all the stings American Hollywood
has so graciously given,
the white flag clinging as
saran wrap to itself and to me and
---I reach the rain.
I reach my pinnacle
all stripes and lies fall way and I am,
I am the luckier,
I am the luckiest alone.

On my own

she says,
"if you don't have the money, honey
the honey money
to fly back three or four times a year
you get isolated
up here---its like another world:
and I laugh because
its perfect.
I'm so in between worlds
just one would be nice.
And you can go to
San Franfuckingcisco
and its
fifty-three years of progress
fifty-three years of yuppies and capitalism
fifty-three years away from the San Franfuckingrevolution
and all I love.
I and I will go isolated islanding on the Bering sea
with the wolves
and the silence of heaven
breathe deep in a snowbank
and never come home.

afternoon showers

the thunder hits so loud the glass is shaking in its panels;
rat-ratt-rattling with the shiver of my heartbeat
to go higher and higher
away

i lie.

i lie down to nap and the cat hair gets in my nose.

i wish.

i wish i was burying my nose in white sand ocean wind
and not itchy black cat fur
but the earth smell has to come in somewhere
and the sun refuses to help a sister out.

i wake.

i wake hours later, amidst the empty bag of chips
chips i don't remember eating.

i eat.

i eat to fill an organ where i think my stomach
used to be.

i breathe.

i breathe turning away from the cat and into the sweater
you left behind, the white one under the pumps
and next to the canister of condoms.

i know.

i know i should've left it alone, but it had fallen.
i was afraid the cat would pee on it.
he won't stop peeing on things.
he's such a jerk.

and in the night
there is no one to calm my shakes
and in the night
it is empty and dark
and in the night
it smells like rain i want to give to you
and in the night
i wake frightened
not remembering why
with the ghost of your hair's smell
on the pillow next to mine.